Lord Davies of Oldham: Year1 Annual increase in the licence fee Annual increase in the number of licences in force 
			 1997 2.2 per cent 1.1 per cent 
			 1998 6.6 per cent 1.7 per cent 
			 1999 3.6 per cent 2.1 per cent 
			 2000 3.0 per cent 1.7 per cent 
			 2001 4.8 per cent 1.0 per cent 
			 2002 2.8 per cent 1.4 per cent 
			 2003 3.6 per cent 1.4 per cent 
			 2004 4.3 per cent 1.6 per cent 
			 2005 4.5 per cent 1.4 per cent 
			 2006 4.0 per cent 1.0 per cent 
			 1 Licences in force are recorded as at 31 March each year; fee increases come into effect on 1 April.

Lord Truscott: As a result of the competitive pathfinder round for enterprise capital funds (ECFs), five funds have been launched (as set out in the table below). One fund withdrew from the process.
	As the ECF funds have only recently launched, data on investment activity are not yet due and we are therefore unable to confirm the sums invested by any fund at present.
	
		
			 Fund Legal Agreement Signed Total Size (Private Investor & Government Commitment) Total Government Commitment 
			 IQ Capital Fund 26/09/06 £25 million £16.7 million 
			 Sustainable Technology Fund 09/10/06 £30 million £20 million 
			 Amadeus and Angels Seed Fund 17/10/06 £10 million £6.5 million 
			 Seraphim Capital Fund 11/09/06 £30 million £20 million 
			 Catapult Growth Fund 22/12/06 £30 million £18 million

Baroness Amos: The DfID office in India regularly assesses progress on poverty reduction and other millennium development goals (MDGs) in India. These assessments are based on official Government of India (GoI) statistics.
	The most recent assessment of progress at the national level was undertaken in September 2004. The estimate of Dalits (also known as scheduled castes) below the poverty line is 35 per cent in rural areas, as compared with 21 per cent among other groups, and in urban areas 39 per cent of Dalits are below the poverty line as compared to 21 per cent among other groups. This is based on the most recent large-scale National Sample Survey of the GoI carried out in 2000. The overall proportion of the population living in poverty was assessed as 35 per cent according to the international (dollar a day) poverty line, or 360 million people.
	DfID's programme in India operates in support of the GoI's efforts to combat caste and ethnic discrimination and social exclusion in all its forms, including by strengthening programme design and monitoring to ensure that the benefits of development reach Dalits and other minority populations. DfID does not support particular programmes aimed at minority communities but promotes social inclusion in all its programmes.
	In education, DfID supports India's national programme for achieving universal primary education (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan—SSA). One of the objectives of this programme, which was launched in September 2004, is to narrow the gap that exists between the enrolment of scheduled caste and other children.
	Special efforts are needed to ensure that Dalits are able to exercise their rights to access mainstream services. In health, for example, where child mortality (under five years) among the Dalits is 83 per 1,000 live births as compared to 22 for the general population, DfID has committed £252 million in support of the GoI's national programme to promote reproductive and child health (RCH2). The programme aims to reduce all disparities in maternal and infant mortality and has specific indicators for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, women and children. There are financial incentives in RCH2 for reaching the hard-to-reach groups. The programme will improve the data available (at the national level) to track progress and make informed decisions to achieve better health outcomes for Dalits and Adivasi (scheduled tribes) women and children.

Job Centres: Customer Care Officers

Job Centres: Customer Care Officers

Lord McKenzie of Luton: The department entered into a 20-year PFI contract with Land Securities Trillium (LST) in 1998 known as the PRIME contract, which was expanded in 2003 following the merger of Department of Social Security and the Employment Service. The department pays an all-inclusive unitary charge to LST for this provision.
	This unitary charge includes 13 reference facility management services, one of which is the provision of security. An element of the overall security package is customer care officers. Therefore, DWP does not make direct payments to security firms for this provision.
	The original PRIME contract and the subsequent expansion were both subject to independent audits by the National Audit Office (NAO). They concluded that the original contract represented value for money, making specific comment in 1998 that the LST deal compared favourably with continued public sector ownership and that the costs of facility management services (including security) was low.
	The customer care officer role was introduced in 2001 to complement the change in service delivery by the then newly formed Jobcentre Plus to front-of-house public waiting areas and goes beyond that of a typical security specification. Therefore, it was not possible externally to benchmark the cost of this service.
	However, the NAO concluded in its report dated January 2005 that the expansion also represented value for money, in that although this was a non-competitive expansion, LST's final price provided greater savings than the "should cost model" developed by DWP and its professional advisers to assist in determining value for money from the expansion.
	To date, LST has been paid approximately £27 million for the period 2002-05; 2005-06 expenditure on CCOs was £15.2 million. The forecast for spend in 2006-07 is approximately £26.4 million and is likely to increase as a further 20 sites go live.